Posts Tagged ‘Safety’

During our fabled Auction Week here in Phoenix, our friends at Allison Partners and Toyota invited working media out to a special evening program to demonstrate their Toyota Safety Sense (TSS) systems.

The event held at Wildhorse Motorsports Park started with a detailed presentation by Toyota sales training representatives to outline the various systems that come on all Toyota models starting for the 2017 model year.

Presenter Derek Huff who teaches Toyota dealer sales how to sell and demonstrate the products, explained to our members in detail how the various elements of TSS operate and which Toyota models come with each set of safety features.

TSS comes in two forms, TSS-C for compact and entry level models and TSS-P for larger and more upscale vehicles.

TSS-C includes an array of camera based passive and active safety features and driver assistance programs. There is a pre-collision functionality that uses a forward looking camera to detect the car moving up on vehicles ahead. It can first alert the driver then take action to brake if the driver doesn’t.

Also included is a lane departure alert that will give auditory and visual warnings to the driver if they are crossing over lane lines. TSS-C also includes automatic high-beam headlamps.

On more premium and larger class models Toyota now has standard TSS-P. It takes the feature set of TSS-C and adds a millimeter wave radar capability that enables a finer set of skills for its pre-collision system and automatic braking.

It can detect pedestrians and other objects above and beyond another vehicle and as such offers additional capability to help prevent accidents. TSS-P also has a more elaborate lane keeping function that adds steering assist that can also help nudge a driver back into the lane if they are crossing visible lines.

Added here is also dynamic radar cruise control which can maintain your car at a set speed and at a set distance to traffic ahead. As demonstrated on site at the event, this can enable the car to adjust speed based on vehicles in front of it at a set distance and even come to a complete stop, then continue on.

Toyota stressed that TSS is an enhancement to safety and not a substitute for driver awareness and interaction. They pointed out clearly that some road conditions including surfaces, weather and traffic may preclude the systems from being able to operate.

During the presentation phase there was a healthy question and answer session followed by in-car demonstrations of the pre-collision systems, the dynamic radar cruise control and the parking assistive programs available on Toyota models.

Special thanks to Allison Partners and Toyota Motor Sales USA for providing this window into the new safety systems and how sales representatives are trained to present them to customers.